Article - CS383174
Apache Tomcat crashes and shows "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in method name" in the catalina log after enabling SSL/TLS on ThingWorx Platform
Modified: 22-Sep-2025
Applies To
- ThingWorx Platform 8.5 to 9.3
Description
- Apache Tomcat and ThingWorx Platform start as expected but crash as soon as a user or device attempts to connect
- ThingWorx Platform stays up until a user tries to reach the Composer
- Recently enabled SSL/TLS and ThingWorx Platform now crashes every time a user tries to login
- ThingWorx Platform is unstable after enabling SSL/TLS
- Seeing the following error in the Apache Tomcat catalina log located within <Apache Tomcat>\logs after attempting to access ThingWorx Platform:
INFO [main] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.start Starting ProtocolHandler ["http-nio-8443"] INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start Server startup in [30414] milliseconds INFO [http-nio-8443-exec-1] org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.service Error parsing HTTP request header Note: further occurrences of HTTP request parsing errors will be logged at DEBUG level. java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid character found in method name [0x160x030x010x020x000x010x000x010xfc0x030x03;#0xf80x8a0xfe-20x120x9c60xa40xc80xd10xbe0xfcOiw0x9060x9c0xe90xb6pV0xca0xb5R20x1b0xbd0x0f]. HTTP method names must be tokens at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11InputBuffer.parseRequestLine(Http11InputBuffer.java:418) at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.service(Http11Processor.java:260) at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProcessorLight.process(AbstractProcessorLight.java:65) ... INFO [Thread-35] org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol.pause Pausing ProtocolHandler ["http-nio-8443"]
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